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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28289148">Five Seasons In The Garden</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/lasergirl/pseuds/lasergirl'>lasergirl</a>, <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/lasergirl/pseuds/MissBuster'>MissBuster (lasergirl)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera &amp; Related Fandoms, The Phantom of the Opera (TV 1990)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Blank Verse, F/M, Multi, Poetry, Romance, Slow Burn, eventual OT3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 23:49:03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>6,550</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28289148</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/lasergirl/pseuds/lasergirl, https://archiveofourown.org/users/lasergirl/pseuds/MissBuster</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>An exploration in poetic blank verse of an Erik who exists in the modern world. He lives and works in a sprawling cemetery as the head gardener. Before Christine came into his life, he lived a meager existence and thought he was satisfied. Relationships are tricky things, however, and as Erik grows he struggles with learning to be loved. </p><p>Eventual OT3.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Christine Daaé/Erik | Phantom of the Opera</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Autumn</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/snows/gifts">snows</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  
</p><p>(<em>e. californica</em> California Poppy)</p><p>I.</p><p>The cemetery is an old one:<br/>
The trees here have grown unchecked since before the founding of the country<br/>
And the little stone cottage has stood under a venerable oak tree for a hundred years<br/>
Or maybe more.</p><p>The cottage and its grounds<br/>
Adjoin a modest church<br/>
Nestled amongst the gravestones<br/>
Grey stone etched by rain.<br/>
The people buried here saw the last century birthed<br/>
They aged and withered into the millennium.</p><p>The seasons pass with regularity;<br/>
Autumn gives way to winter<br/>
Frozen, chilled, beneath a mantle of snow<br/>
And the ice melts and furnishes new life to the spring<br/>
Summer’s heat bakes and then the season turns again into fall<br/>
So it goes, year after year<br/>
Predictable, comforting<br/>
And so, so solitary.</p><p>This is a city of the dead with one occupant who still draws breath<br/>
The stone cottage, though small, is where he resides<br/>
And although he might entertain the thought<br/>
The daydream<br/>
The fantasy<br/>
Of living someplace not ringed in the beds of the deceased<br/>
He has never lived anywhere else and so<br/>
Shamefully thinks<br/>
This must be home.</p><p>It is certainly never a word he suggested<br/>
But learned instead from the lips of his mother<br/>
Bright and hopeful.<br/>
Home suggests comfort<br/>
An intention to stay, improve, make beautiful.<br/>
The little stone cottage had borne those dreams once for a mother and her child<br/>
But that was a long time ago<br/>
And the years have worn harshly.</p><p>It was a working man’s house when it was built, and so it remains<br/>
Rough but serviceable<br/>
Stone fireplace and hearth warm the four small rooms in winter<br/>
And in summer the thick stone walls keep out the worst of the heat<br/>
It is adjoined on the back wall to what was once a summer kitchen but is now a stock room for the cemetery’s greenhouse</p><p>Never forgetting its working roots<br/>
The stone cottage siphons its electricity and water from the glasshouse<br/>
Its inhabitants riotously living<br/>
Furnish the flowerbeds and borders of the cemetery season after season<br/>
And he is their keeper.</p><p>Once as a boy he carved his name into the oak tree’s bark<br/>
But it has long scarred and grown over<br/>
The stone house is not truly a home<br/>
There is little beauty in its faded paint and chipped plaster<br/>
The floorboards sometimes swollen from damp<br/>
Or the windows embroidered in frost<br/>
But it is the only place he has ever known.</p><p>It is surrounded on three sides by the cemetery’s sprawl<br/>
On the fourth, a copse of trees<br/>
Too tightly knit to see between<br/>
It is pastoral, too pleasingly green in the growing season<br/>
Architectural in the short days and longer evenings of winter.</p><p>A visitor to the cemetery would easily pass it by<br/>
It is on a small gravel drive travelled so rarely by anyone<br/>
The history it holds is not reflected on a plaque or a marker stone<br/>
As for graves of any notice<br/>
In these plots of land lie politicians, artists and famous drunkards<br/>
Architects and naval officers<br/>
He knows them all by heart<br/>
Their stories and their final resting places.</p><p>He daily tends their graves no matter the weather<br/>
Tidies the pathways to the columbarium<br/>
Sculpts the memory garden’s hedged borders and grassy meadows<br/>
When there are flowers in bloom he is never far behind<br/>
The fragrant roses nod, the peonies<br/>
And the opulent poppies.</p><p>There is a footworn labyrinth in the meadow<br/>
Grass thin from contemplative feet<br/>
And between the meandering pathways are small banked mounds<br/>
Hillocks of soil seeded over with grass<br/>
It is here the poppies bloom extravagantly in the sun<br/>
Nodding orange, scarlet, crimson and white<br/>
It is a path his feet have tread countless times<br/>
Seeking solace<br/>
Or a welcome distraction<br/>
The temperament of the garden here can tell him if it will be dry day<br/>
Or warm, clouded or chill.</p><p>And the poppies too give a little comfort<br/>
As they begin to fade into the scorching days of Summer<br/>
He prunes the drooping flowers back from the path<br/>
And gathers a tender handful<br/>
To instill a quart of spirits.</p><p>(It is not the overwhelming tar of the opium poppy he seeks<br/>
But a tincture for sleep<br/>
And sleepless nights<br/>
A poor man’s tonic against a life of pain and hardship<br/>
The guarantee of a few hours’ comfort before the rising of the sun steals it away.)</p><p>A recipe written in his mother’s hand<br/>
Faded and folded into the flyleaf of a book of herbal remedies and cures<br/>
Willow for fever<br/>
Burdock for stings<br/>
And California poppy for sleep<br/>
Just a few drops<br/>
Under the tongue<br/>
Or steeped in mint and liquorice<br/>
And not every night<br/>
(Though<br/>
Perhaps more than he might care to admit.)</p><p>He was given very little by his mother<br/>
But all she had she gave to him freely<br/>
She gave him his name – Erik --<br/>
A few books<br/>
And all her love<br/>
The cottage was not hers to give, nor the gardens<br/>
If she could have made him handsome<br/>
No<br/>
Not even handsome, just ordinary<br/>
With a face like anybody else<br/>
He knows she would have.</p><p>But we seldom live the lives we have planned<br/>
And she died too soon<br/>
So there in the entire cemetery is only one grave he holds more dear than any other<br/>
The marker is so very plain<br/>
A square of slate tile amongst a riot of rose bushes.<br/>
In a parting act of charity<br/>
His father paid for her cremation<br/>
What he thought the boy would do with a box of ashes wasn’t certain<br/>
But Erik was a stubborn child<br/>
And given a tangle of thorns, and nothing but time<br/>
He grew a rose garden.</p><p>Planted beside the stone cottage<br/>
Within sight of the columbarium, the labyrinth and the memory garden<br/>
He grows roses, white and red and pink and yellow<br/>
And a purple so dark the withered blooms are black when dried.</p><p>He wasn’t much of a gardener when he laid out this bed<br/>
A few struggling rose bushes and a heap of dirt that had been a kitchen garden<br/>
Having only lived a decade, he had many more before him</p><p>He thought then, perhaps, when he was very old<br/>
Or when he was very tired of living<br/>
That he might join her.</p><p> </p><p>II.</p><p>It is nearly November<br/>
The bite of frost in the air<br/>
Leaves rustling gold russet and red<br/>
The sky painfully blue and cold</p><p>The sunlight brings little warmth where it falls<br/>
The flower beds and edgings are fading green and dusted brown<br/>
Seed pods rattle in the wind</p><p>Erik puts the gardens to bed for the season<br/>
Gathering the blown leaves of maple and oak to blanket the plantings<br/>
Tulip, daffodil, crocus and hyacinth will burst to life after the thaw<br/>
The tempo of his days change<br/>
The mice nest in next year’s peat<br/>
And he hasn’t the heart to turn them out<br/>
Perhaps he will order another bale instead.</p><p>Four decades worth of felled trees have provided his firewood and kindling<br/>
This year it is the maple from the military burial plots<br/>
Orderly and precise<br/>
It was cut down when it dropped a branch several years ago<br/>
A branch thick around as his own body and many times heavier.</p><p>It’s the time of the year when Gerard hires an extra security circuit through the night<br/>
Only for the final few days of the month<br/>
It’s Halloween<br/>
The time when in his brief youth Erik entertained the thought just maybe<br/>
A mask in public would be tolerated<br/>
He is older now and can say from experience that some ideas are better left untested.</p><p>When he was very small<br/>
He would accompany his mother<br/>
Walking proudly beside her holding her hand, the wagon rattling behind them<br/>
The groceries already waiting in a box<br/>
Loaded across the back step by a stern man with a moustache<br/>
Iranian immigrants, the man and his wife had recently lost their only son<br/>
They were fond of Erik<br/>
And would always insist on giving too much change back from the meagre groceries his mother would buy<br/>
He remembers her proudly insisting<br/>
No, this is too much, too much<br/>
And the moustached man putting another can of vegetables into the box when she wasn’t looking<br/>
The man and his wife were pleasant, polite<br/>
Never asked about the boy<br/>
Even when he was small and wore folded bandanas over his face<br/>
Like a hero in a cowboy story<br/>
His mother would tie them<br/>
Over the twisted lip and open holes of his nose<br/>
Saying what a clever handsome boy he was.</p><p>He still goes every week<br/>
The couple is older now and their son carries the order over the back step<br/>
And loads the box into Erik’s truck<br/>
Sometimes Erik pays too much for his groceries and won’t accept the change<br/>
He walks in the shadow of his mother even now<br/>
Twenty-five years after her death.</p><p>So it is past the bright riot of fall colours and heading into the shorter days and longer dark<br/>
And there is fresh earth turned by the cluster of old lilacs<br/>
A section last opened in 1962<br/>
He doesn’t recall a service<br/>
But there is a girl who visits<br/>
She comes on the city bus well into the afternoon<br/>
And sits for an hour or two by the plot<br/>
So pitifully close to the roadway<br/>
Her head bowed.</p><p>He recognizes the supplication of mourning<br/>
A novice perhaps in the workings of the graveyard but no stranger to loss<br/>
The slope of her shoulders tells him so much about the weight of her world.</p><p> </p><p>III.</p><p>There have been people who have briefly touched his life<br/>
Graced him with knowledge and drifted away<br/>
There was a priest who came to the small church for Sunday services<br/>
He was tired and grey<br/>
He read to Erik from the hymnal after service<br/>
Encouraged him to sing<br/>
But he was so shy he would never attend<br/>
Not wanting to be seen.</p><p>The former groundskeeper who had always checked in on them when his mother was alive<br/>
Took Erik on as a sort of apprentice<br/>
Raking leaves<br/>
Shoveling the snow<br/>
Until one day he stopped coming to work and Erik, newly 16 and strong as a horse<br/>
Kept on.</p><p>His mother’s journal is the guideline for everything that happens in the cemetery’s gardens<br/>
When they are dormant<br/>
When he transplants, takes cuttings, starts seeds<br/>
Her sketches of the planned expansions come into existence through his hands</p><p>The absent father – Gerard –<br/>
Has never spoken to Erik as though he were his son<br/>
But an employee vague and impersonal<br/>
Erik leaves him lists<br/>
Impeccable bookkeeping<br/>
Draws a tiny salary<br/>
It is more an accident that he is able to live on any amount of money.</p><p>Gerard tried to place him in the business office once<br/>
Over ten years ago, now<br/>
Receiving flower arrangements<br/>
And embalming chemicals<br/>
And plain cardboard caskets for the cremations<br/>
His boy<br/>
He tried the label<br/>
It fit him poorly<br/>
As did Erik’s first mask worn for the benefit of others.</p><p>You’ll want this<br/>
Gerard shoved a plastic shopping bag into his hands<br/>
For work.</p><p>When Erik turned it out onto his kitchen table<br/>
There was a white shirt, a black tie<br/>
And that thing<br/>
A tawdry Mardi Gras domino<br/>
Black satin with flecks of glue where the sequins had been peeled off<br/>
The reverse of cotton muslin and sizing that scratched.</p><p>Erik wanted so much to have somewhere to belong<br/>
That he wore it<br/>
Gritting his teeth at each bite of the glue against his tender skin<br/>
By the end of the day he bled<br/>
Staining the collar of the white shirt<br/>
And Gerard must have realized his efforts were in vain<br/>
He let Erik continue to rake leaves<br/>
And<br/>
He never visited the cottage again.</p><p>Erik burned the beastly mask in the fireplace<br/>
And made a salve for the new sores on his face<br/>
It would be another year or so before he had a mask that fit him well enough that he could spend a day being seen.</p><p> </p><p>IV.</p><p>He doesn’t expect to see the girl again<br/>
But on another day in October<br/>
Gerard’s receiving clerk is ill<br/>
And Erik finds himself uncomfortably pressed into crisp shirt and tie for the day<br/>
Itching at the wrists and collar to be outside<br/>
As he signs a delivery for a flower arrangement<br/>
A waterfall of pale lilies for a casket</p><p>She steps from the accounts office bright tears on her cheeks and a scowl<br/>
Nearly collides with him as he cradles the swag of flowers<br/>
A folded paper flies from her hand</p><p>The rules say:<br/>
No live arrangements during the growing season<br/>
And no faded artificial arrangements<br/>
The rules say<br/>
Damaged or unsightly flowers placed on graves may be removed<br/>
The rules say<br/>
A stone must be a certain size<br/>
Dressed, contain the name and date<br/>
It may not be engraved on the reverse</p><p>They delivered the stone,<br/>
She tells him, face downturned as she scrabbles for the paper<br/>
They delivered the stone and it’s wrong.</p><p>He waits politely<br/>
Shielded by the lilies<br/>
And she straightens up<br/>
Gazes at him curiously<br/>
Does he look as out of place as he feels?<br/>
This mask is the newest one he has<br/>
Closest in shape and colour to a proper face<br/>
She doesn’t even blink an eye.</p><p>You work here, don’t you?</p><p>He’s pinned<br/>
Nods and attempts to bypass the nervous stammer that chokes his reply<br/>
The gardens.</p><p>They won’t place the stone.</p><p>Her father had ordered it, over twenty years ago<br/>
For his wife<br/>
And then in eventuality for himself<br/>
The plot is so small<br/>
Some wouldn’t even bother raising a stone<br/>
But Papa felt it was proper<br/>
And paid<br/>
Half in advance<br/>
And half upon his death<br/>
A portion set aside in his accounts to cover the cost.</p><p>But a burial requires money<br/>
Even a simple one<br/>
A cardboard casket and a cremation urn<br/>
And just like that<br/>
The money he left her is gone<br/>
As if it never were<br/>
And he is gone, too.</p><p>Christine doesn’t remember her mother<br/>
Only her absence<br/>
And the stories he would tell<br/>
And there was always her Papa,<br/>
His warmth and tenderness.</p><p>She tells Erik her plight<br/>
Half in tears<br/>
Half in confession<br/>
As if sharing her pain would lighten the load she carries.</p><p>I don’t usually work indoors<br/>
He tells her<br/>
But I can bring this to the attention of the general manager<br/>
He may be able to help.</p><p>And he takes her phone number<br/>
Written on the outside of the folded paper<br/>
A grainy photocopy of the cemetery’s agreements<br/>
Regarding the placement of stones, etc.</p><p>She is so kind<br/>
He forgets the mask pressing on his face<br/>
And the collared tie slowly strangling him<br/>
He walks her to the atrium and watches her walk out into his garden<br/>
Wishing to be with her.</p><p> </p><p>V.</p><p>The general manager is Gerard, and he refuses.</p><p>He insists the rules are clear<br/>
And the stone carvers were aware that the obverse inscription was not permitted<br/>
That’s not a matter for the cemetery, he says<br/>
And so<br/>
He brushes it off.</p><p>Sullenly Erik leaves him<br/>
And his thoughts continue to wander<br/>
Back to the girl<br/>
Her father<br/>
And the headstone that has upended her grief.</p><p>Even as he is bordering a bed of dwarf iris<br/>
Tart and purple against the pale ornamental grasses<br/>
His spade slips.</p><p>The thought of her is so foreign to him that he wanders through the days perplexed<br/>
Distracted<br/>
Circles past the gravesite more than once hoping to see her<br/>
And then in a long afternoon he sees her again<br/>
Striding across the meadow from the roadway choked with cars<br/>
She alights near the plot and settles in the fading golden light cross-legged<br/>
Across her shoulder is a school bag weighing heavily<br/>
In her hand is a grocery store bouquet of cut flowers.</p><p>The rules say:<br/>
No cut flowers during the growing season<br/>
And the rules also say<br/>
No arrangements beyond a week after the service.</p><p>Erik is very clear about this rule and tracks the memorials<br/>
On a chalkboard in the greenhouse.</p><p>There are others:<br/>
(No solar lights or battery lamps<br/>
Candles are permitted but must be attended.)</p><p>Erik wrote none of these rules<br/>
They have been inherited<br/>
Like so much else in his life,<br/>
And he has never been curious enough to ask.</p><p>Until now he has felt the rules were fair enough<br/>
But watching Christine navigate their bias he feels them differently.</p><p>The plot is too near the road<br/>
Too near the ridges of mud pushed up from tire tracks<br/>
He makes a mental note to plant something at this corner to keep the place<br/>
Make the traffic turn wider<br/>
Perhaps when there’s a stone.</p><p>And when she returns to the cemetery<br/>
To sit at the graveside of her parents<br/>
He lets the bouquets stay by the unmarked place<br/>
He permits her modest acts of remembrance to remain.</p><p>Erik should clear the cheap remains of the withered flowers<br/>
Rake the grass clean<br/>
Turn away from her barefaced mourning.</p><p>He should not<br/>
By any accounts<br/>
Speak to her softly<br/>
Offer her a cup of tea<br/>
Even a hand-harvested tisane would be amiss<br/>
But who is there to stop him?</p><p>Certainly not Gerard<br/>
The man wouldn’t dare show any interest<br/>
In what has been<br/>
At best<br/>
A minor diversion in his life’s course.</p><p>What Erik lacks in graces<br/>
He claims in compassion<br/>
This gentle <em>caring</em><br/>
A glacial force pressing against the enormous amount of indifference in the world.</p><p>He invites her<br/>
Into the lonely stone cottage.</p><p>The rules say:</p><p>Damn the rules.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Winter</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  
</p><p>(<i>V. album</i> Mistletoe)</p><p> </p><p>I.</p><p>Winter in the stone cottage settles slowly<br/>
For Erik, tending the fire becomes a new rhythm<br/>
Instead of a slow cycle of growth and decay it interrupts like a hungry child<br/>
Devouring firewood and shifting to ash.</p><p>Christine sketches idly perched on the uncomfortable settee<br/>
The scratch of her pencil across the paper’s tooth<br/>
Draws the mantle with its faded photograph and dried roses, cream and black<br/>
The curve of a branch outside the window where the oak tree brushes the passing skies. </p><p>She draws Erik, too, but knows he isn’t comfortable being seen<br/>
He inhabits the blank and empty spaces placed centre on her pages<br/>
Defined by what surrounds him<br/>
The headstones and laneways<br/>
And the gardens<br/>
Even shrouded in snow<br/>
Reflect him with more accuracy than a mirror ever could. </p><p>When winter solstice moon rises pale over the bare treetops<br/>
Half her face obscured<br/>
It is the afternoon of the longest night of the year, the temperature well below freezing<br/>
And there is a boy walking up the gravel drive<br/>
He is well dressed<br/>
But for a heated car ride and not this disoriented struggle<br/>
Stiff shoes scuff against stones frozen into the road.</p><p>Erik encounters him while carrying wood for the fire<br/>
And the boy looks up<br/>
A look of sheer misery on his face<br/>
My car<br/>
Says the boy<br/>
Is parked at the chapel<br/>
I think<br/>
No matter how often I visit<br/>
I can never find my way. </p><p>Erik does not dryly note the signs he has ensured are carefully placed<br/>
At each crossroads and junction<br/>
Finding the way for visitors and historians alike<br/>
Because he knows grief steals from those left behind<br/>
Robs their perception and reason<br/>
This boy could be standing at the map plainly marked with a red dot and still not find himself. </p><p>You have wandered quite a bit<br/>
Erik tells him<br/>
And you are hardly dressed for the weather<br/>
If you give me a moment, I will drive you to the chapel. </p><p>Shivering, the boy accepts, and Erik goes inside<br/>
To deposit his armful of split wood<br/>
To retrieve his keys from the hook by the door<br/>
And to tell Christine that he won’t be long<br/>
But he misjudges the boy’s fortitude<br/>
And as the keys clink into his hand he realizes that he has been trailed into the cottage itself. </p><p>With a precise finger he points<br/>
To the mat inside the door<br/>
Wait here.</p><p>Until this year<br/>
Erik would never have never let another person inside the stone cottage<br/>
Until this season<br/>
He hadn’t another person to invite<br/>
Until this day<br/>
He never knew what he would do<br/>
But to return the lost boy<br/>
That should be done properly<br/>
And so he goes to retrieve the rusted truck and wake it from its slumber.</p><p>It is old<br/>
As workmanlike as the cottage<br/>
That is to say<br/>
Not quaint or comfortable<br/>
But it suits the purpose. </p><p>One headlight refuses to stay lit for more than a month and in the waning days leading up to winter Erik replaces it before bolting on the plow<br/>
The body panels may drip rust<br/>
But the engine turns over every time if kept warm<br/>
And so there is an orange lifeline strung from the greenhouse to where the truck is parked.</p><p>Brought around and waiting<br/>
The truck idles as he dismounts the running board and goes inside<br/>
The mat is empty where he bade the boy wait<br/>
And he hears voices from the room nearest the fireplace<br/>
Peers through the doorway<br/>
To find Christine has received the boy with all the grace of a saint. </p><p>He is huddled by the fire with a cup of tea<br/>
(green, lemongrass, elderflower, honey)<br/>
And she has learned how to bank the hearth just so<br/>
The golden firelight casts amber across both their faces<br/>
Picks out the sunlight woven through their hair. </p><p>They are summer children<br/>
These two golden haired angels<br/>
His heart swells so suddenly he thinks he shall die of it<br/>
Instead, he chokes on his own swallowed words. </p><p>Raoul<br/>
She tells him<br/>
(The name is familiar)<br/>
The DeChagny family plot is his<br/>
(Phillippe newly chiselled into the marble)<br/>
The mausoleum and the metered stones<br/>
His father was interred a decade ago<br/>
But his brother has been dead for only a year<br/>
A year of mourning<br/>
Of growing more lost with each visit.</p><p>Try as he may he can never find the proper roadway<br/>
To return to where the car awaits<br/>
Usually, Raoul simply walks until he recognizes a landmark<br/>
Sometimes the busy roadway adjoining the property<br/>
Or the military burials with their tight white rows<br/>
None of these are ever anywhere near where he has parked the car<br/>
His sense of direction is extremely poor and being in mourning has crippled it further.</p><p>Christine knows several routes to her tiny family plot<br/>
The shortest from the bus stop across the street<br/>
Where she alights on the curb and dashes across between cars<br/>
The pensive, scenic walkway past the reflecting pond is a favourite<br/>
But her most recent path lately has been by way of the stone cottage<br/>
Where she stops to visit Erik after taking her time at the gravesite<br/>
She lingers at his doorstep<br/>
And his humble green kitchen<br/>
Where he has given her his only chair and moved a wooden crate to serve as a second seat.</p><p>He is so unaccustomed to company<br/>
That the sight of the boy sitting with her on the settee unravels a small part of himself<br/>
And he must knit it back up quick before anything else has a chance to loosen. </p><p>When he intrudes upon their small domesticity it is with reluctance<br/>
He offers to drive the boy back to where his car awaits<br/>
His face is rosy-cheeked from the fire<br/>
Or perhaps it is an embarrassment<br/>
That he has taken the seat next to Christine<br/>
When the gentleman of the house is so clearly present. </p><p>Raoul untangles himself from the settee<br/>
Quite pink high on the cheekbones<br/>
Gathers his coat and fine shoes. </p><p>He has parked near the chapel<br/>
(He thinks)<br/>
So Erik drives looking straight ahead<br/>
Not wanting to taint the silence with rough words. </p><p>Raoul draws a finger in the condensation on the passenger side window<br/>
Swirls and curlicues against the continued march of monuments and stone memorials<br/>
And he wonders when it will go away<br/>
That pain inside his ribcage as if a bone has cracked.</p><p>I keep missing him<br/>
He confesses<br/>
How long until I feel whole again?</p><p>My mother died when I was ten<br/>
Erik touches the dash where a tiny stem of dried lavender is affixed with peeling tape<br/>
In the place of a sacrament<br/>
I mourn her every day<br/>
I think it will sting less and less<br/>
But you will always be missing that part of yourself. </p><p>Raoul hangs his head and weeps a little<br/>
So when Erik pulls the truck up next to the low black car at the chapel<br/>
He has to wipe his eyes before he can get out<br/>
Armor himself in his own vehicle to drive away. </p><p>Erik expects Christine will be gone when he returns<br/>
But it is a shock to him when she slides over<br/>
There isn’t much room on the ancient horsehair chaise<br/>
But she shifts and pats the seat with one tender hand<br/>
And that part he has spent effort in knitting up tightly falls undone again. </p><p>He goes to her, his hands chill from the steering wheel<br/>
And she presses her fingers against his palms<br/>
Tracing the lines and wrinkles entwined she thanks him. </p><p>The sweet praise draws tears from his eyes and he has to turn away<br/>
To blot them against a sleeve<br/>
Before they can run under his mask.</p><p>II.</p><p>Sometime during the long winter<br/>
The single friendship becomes two<br/>
As Christine reaches out<br/>
Greets Raoul when their mournings intertwine<br/>
Walks with him to where (he hopes) he has parked his car. </p><p>Then one afternoon she leaves with him<br/>
She doesn’t know it, but they are overseen<br/>
Accidentally.</p><p>Erik was not in the cottage when she called on him<br/>
Nor in the glasshouse<br/>
Steamed and tropical beneath the blanket of snow<br/>
She doesn’t know that as he was leaving the business office<br/>
Lodging a complaint about the machine he uses to clear the snow from the walkways<br/>
Nursing a sore shoulder<br/>
And bruised ego<br/>
A long black car swept past<br/>
And Erik saw her in the front seat before the curve in the drive pulled them out of sight. </p><p>He arrived back at the stone cottage to see a note tucked in the crack between door and frame<br/>
A scrap of her drawing paper<br/>
Smudged in charcoal<br/>
Hope you are well<br/>
I will see you soon.</p><p>And he laughed bitterly<br/>
Knowing it was only a matter of time.<br/>
For like calls to like<br/>
And Christine and the boy are two of a kind<br/>
Different faces of the same golden coin<br/>
That they have spent this long apart from each other is the miracle<br/>
Not that they have at last given in to their mutual gravity<br/>
Two stars pulled into mutual orbit. </p><p>And if Erik takes a little of his poppy brew tonight, well<br/>
There is no one to show concern<br/>
And if a bruise the size of his palm blossoms on his shoulder overnight, well<br/>
Then he will rub a salve on it where he can reach<br/>
There is no hurt he is unaccustomed to feeling<br/>
No greater injustice than the one he was born to. </p><p>He doesn’t see either of them for nearly a week<br/>
A week of fighting with the failing snow machine<br/>
Of dressing gingerly while his shoulder complains of lifting his arm too high<br/>
Of restating his needs to Gerard who promises things will change. </p><p>Nearly a week<br/>
And when Christine arrives at his door, she has a plastic shopping bag in her hands<br/>
Strained and knotted, one handle split through from the carrying. </p><p>I brought you something<br/>
She tells him timidly<br/>
As if afraid he will object<br/>
She could give him anything<br/>
A knife between the ribs<br/>
And he would thank her. </p><p>It is a blanket, impossibly soft<br/>
A cloud of warmth in her hands that she drapes into his<br/>
I saw you didn’t have one for the couch, she says. </p><p>He worries for the fibres of the blanket near the open fireplace<br/>
An errant spark could burn a hole<br/>
Or worse<br/>
And yet<br/>
He cannot allow himself to put that blanket anywhere else<br/>
But on the ancient settee waiting for her.</p><p>She doesn’t say<br/>
You have only one blanket and it’s on your bed<br/>
The four rooms of the cottage have separation but even she would have glanced in passing<br/>
He has nothing to hide except his face<br/>
Why would he close a door?<br/>
Perhaps she suspects but does not say<br/>
He sleeps by the fire more often than the furniture might suggest. </p><p>And then:<br/>
It is late in January when the boy comes to visit<br/>
Nose red from the cold<br/>
And of his own accord.</p><p>Erik feels something towards him that he hasn’t before<br/>
He takes the kettle from atop the stove and makes him tea<br/>
(spicy dried nettle, lavender, dandelion)<br/>
Collected leaf by leaf from the bundles hung to dry on the rafters. </p><p>Raoul sits at the battered table<br/>
Uneven, cracked, one leg shorter than the others<br/>
A scrap of shingle wedged under it<br/>
His brother has been dead seventeen months now<br/>
And he feels just as whole.</p><p>The walls of the kitchen are papered with her drawings<br/>
Black charcoal smeared into crevices<br/>
Raoul sees them as if for the first time<br/>
his face a picture of wonder as he truly looks.</p><p>Raoul tells him he yearns for what Christine has<br/>
She turns pain into light<br/>
Allows it to live in her and take her over<br/>
But never lets it win.</p><p>I have to see her, he says<br/>
But he is bashful because: can you take me back to the parking lot?<br/>
After all he has no sense of direction after all this time.</p><p>So Erik expects one day that it will be the last he sees of Christine<br/>
Yet there she is again<br/>
A spot of colour against the frozen tableaux<br/>
A scarlet scarf curled around her throat<br/>
Pulled up against the sting of frost.<br/>
She leaves red roses on her father’s grave today<br/>
Wilting already from the cold<br/>
White scars along the stems where the thorns were stripped. </p><p>And on another afternoon they arrive together<br/>
In Raoul’s low black car<br/>
And Erik feels this will be the last day he will see her<br/>
He knows it deep in his heart though he never speaks the words<br/>
But makes them tea<br/>
(Loose leaf with orange, cinnamon, ginger)<br/>
And puts her store bought biscuits on his least-cracked plate<br/>
Wondering when she will be cruel. </p><p>One afternoon Raoul puts a second seat in the kitchen<br/>
A stool too new it is out of place<br/>
But now they all three sit at the table. </p><p>And one sleeting grey day Christine hangs a rice paper shade corded lightbulb in the corner<br/>
Throwing the shadows away from the place she sits to draw. </p><p>They sit all three of them<br/>
Perhaps not all at the same time but in all combinations<br/>
On the horsehair settee<br/>
Avoiding the lumps where unbound springs attempt to escape.</p><p>Each time they visit<br/>
And each time she is not cruel<br/>
The summer children venture out to mourn in the winter chill<br/>
And then come to warm their hands and hearts at Erik’s hearth<br/>
Their continued return is a wonderous thing. </p><p> </p><p>III.</p><p>That Yuletide is the first since he was a child<br/>
Erik sacrifices one of the firs from the untamed woodlot behind his cottage<br/>
A small one, not as tall as his shoulder<br/>
Propped upright in an earthenware crock with pea gravel and sand from the greenhouse<br/>
Christine is delighted<br/>
Strings together cranberries like jewels<br/>
Borrows dried slices of orange from Erik’s kitchen rafters for lack of ornaments<br/>
With acorns lightly golden from the fall<br/>
She adorns its trembling boughs. </p><p>Christine arrives with an armful of candles and a hanging ball of greenery<br/>
Raoul with takeaway containers promising roasted chicken<br/>
And Erik for perhaps the first time in his life eats too much<br/>
So his stomach feels tight. </p><p>Christine kisses him under the mistletoe<br/>
Her lips touched with olive oil and rosemary<br/>
And before he can react she is kissing Raoul too<br/>
Her face alight with joy. </p><p>He has not given a gift in years<br/>
In his lonely decades there have been few occasions.</p><p>He gives to her a jar of his strawberry preserves<br/>
Canned in July<br/>
The height of summer ripeness bursting from the berries<br/>
They glisten inside the glass container<br/>
More precious than rubies. </p><p>To Raoul he shyly presents a jar of brine, crisp speared pickles<br/>
With dill plucked from his kitchen garden<br/>
They glow a glaucous green<br/>
Far from emerald but valued nonetheless. </p><p>In truth he had expected nothing in return<br/>
And is easily overwhelmed<br/>
When Christine presents a picture frame<br/>
A work toned sepia so detailed<br/>
The sprawling oak, dark trees and the low stone cottage<br/>
Picked out in ink crushed from the rinds of black walnut. </p><p>Raoul apologizes for his gift as he gives it<br/>
A lovely enamelled kettle with a wire handle<br/>
Stout enough to sit on the range<br/>
Or hang from the fire hook at the hearth<br/>
So Erik can pour them tea<br/>
(Black, hibiscus, rose, with honey)<br/>
All three without having to refill the pot. </p><p>Such a simple thing<br/>
The luxury of company, and firelight<br/>
And food to share.</p><p>Raoul dozes on the settee<br/>
His face this time flushed with wine<br/>
Christine beside him, gazing into the fire<br/>
And Erik haunting the doorway in between.</p><p>She rises<br/>
Takes his hands and sways in a gentle embrace<br/>
Music only she can hear.</p><p>That night it is too late<br/>
Too cold for her to walk to the bus stop<br/>
And Raoul is a hollowed wreck<br/>
And so they stay.</p><p>He makes a nest for the three of them<br/>
Together by the fireplace<br/>
Of a dragged in mattress from his bedroom<br/>
And every pillow and blanket<br/>
And banks the fire high to keep out the draughts. </p><p>He dreams that night of bright summer sun and scorching heat<br/>
And sleeps with then golden children by his side<br/>
Cradled warmly until the morning. </p><p> </p><p>IV.</p><p>There is snow on the wind tonight<br/>
Erik will be behind the wheel until all the lane ways that run through the grounds are cleared<br/>
While a hobby gardener hibernates in winter<br/>
He is pressed into rougher service. </p><p>He scrapes the snow from the entrances<br/>
Between the stone and iron gates where the city plows ruck up mountains<br/>
The driven pathways are kept free between the cemetery’s sections,<br/>
And he clears the small paved space next to the chapel<br/>
In case the boy wishes to park again and lose himself. </p><p>On the very coldest night Erik sits up with his seedlings<br/>
While the glasshouse panes become ringed in frost<br/>
He frets over the ageing water line, leaving a trickle running in case the frost seeps between the walls to freeze it solid<br/>
(Once when he was younger he staved off a burst line but had to melt snow for several weeks until the extreme weather relented)</p><p>Christine lets herself in<br/>
As she always does<br/>
But it is so late<br/>
And he is not expecting her<br/>
She comes to the bridging wall between house and glass<br/>
And he is bare faced<br/>
Bent among the fledgling plants and beds of soil</p><p>She must have known, of course<br/>
A man does not live outside of the world as he does<br/>
If his looks are redeemable. </p><p>At first she escapes his notice but then<br/>
Oh then<br/>
There is a scrape of footwear on the brick path<br/>
And he sees her hurried shoulder turning<br/>
Rushing back to the safety of the hearth<br/>
In the room where he is not.<br/>
A muffled sound escapes where she has pressed her hand over a cry. </p><p>And his finger flies to his lips<br/>
Those lips that she kissed with abandon only a few weeks before<br/>
His lips, his lips are whole<br/>
And his curiously hazel eyes are clear<br/>
But what comes between forehead and cheek, the hole for a nose,<br/>
The angry abscesses and swollen red flesh<br/>
Twisted scars where skin has dared to heal. </p><p>He waits so long inside the glasshouse that he thinks<br/>
She surely must be gone<br/>
And gone forever, finally. </p><p>Tucked against the dried roses and thorns along the worn stone mantel<br/>
Is a photograph when he was small<br/>
Soft kerchief tied over his poor face<br/>
This is the only record he has of her<br/>
His mother<br/>
And even her face is obscured<br/>
Lost in a flare of light.</p><p>When he returns in shame to his rooms<br/>
Mask snug against his scars<br/>
The fire in the hearth is low<br/>
Only firelight glows in the room<br/>
He hangs his head in darkness.</p><p> </p><p>V.</p><p>February and there is a drizzle hanging in the air<br/>
If left to freeze the paths will be impassable by morning<br/>
And Erik’s shoulder doesn’t pain him as much when he pulls the parking brake<br/>
Leaving the rusty white truck by the groundkeeper’s shed<br/>
He walks to the business office to plead his case.</p><p>His third visit in as many days<br/>
The second hand and well-used snow blower<br/>
A machine nearly as ancient and rustic as his truck<br/>
Today it begrudged him to start at least<br/>
But there is a crack across the auger as wide as his thumb<br/>
And it will not turn. </p><p>When he leaves<br/>
Angrily shoving cold hands in his pockets<br/>
His coat is weighed down in a slick of ice<br/>
As he heads to the groundskeeper’s garage. </p><p>He will make do this night with a shovel<br/>
Around the travelled pavement of the niches<br/>
And the small paved space next to the chapel<br/>
But it cannot last. </p><p>And he sees Gerard step out the back door into the dusk to light a cigarillo<br/>
Perhaps to observe Erik’s work as he puts the broken machine to rest.</p><p>Oh, one more thing<br/>
Says Gerard as if he is only thinking the words this moment<br/>
I’ve made a deal<br/>
The end of June<br/>
One of the local churches wants space to build something of their own. </p><p>He hands him a fat envelope<br/>
One where a sheaf of papers has been awkwardly creased to barely fit<br/>
The folds spring open in Erik’s hand and he scowls at the fine print. </p><p>There’s a lot of money behind them and Gerard has surveyed a stretch of land<br/>
Six acres for a vast paved lot and a crowded complex<br/>
House of worship, meeting space and recreation<br/>
A veritable temple<br/>
But Erik’s cottage stands in the way and so it is to be demolished. </p><p>Of what is to become of Erik, Gerard has no answers, only a shrug<br/>
He extinguishes the cigarillo in the snow along the railing and tosses it away<br/>
I’ll see what I can do about that machine in the morning<br/>
Is all he offers. </p><p>Erik goes and does what he had promised<br/>
Clears the paths for the mourners<br/>
And the lovely old ladies who come to pray at the chapel on Sundays<br/>
But he does no more than that<br/>
And returns to his cottage with frozen hands. </p><p>The fire has gone out<br/>
He fumbles for the matches and tinder<br/>
But then maybe on this night he goes to bed, hearth cold<br/>
Hoping things will be different in the morning.</p>
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